Website Development For SEO – FTP Set Up Guide

Designing websites with SEO in mind doesn’t have to be rocket science. Everything that you need to accomplish this can be learned online and with the assistance of a few books. I am going to write a series of articles showing you how to set up your WordPress blog site, and optimize it for SEO. This article is on FTP set-up, and installing an SEO optimized theme.

Assuming you already have your domain and hosting set up, we are going to jump straight into File Transfer Protocol. If you have not set up your hosting you will need to do that first and make sure that you get a web hosting company with Fantastico. It is a program offered with a select few web hosting companies that allows you to set up WordPress with just a few clicks.

Once you have WordPress set up you are going to need your FTP software. I use Filezilla, and it can be found with a quick search on Google. Just download it and go through the set-up steps as with any other program. Once installed, your initial set-up for transfers will be required. After the first time it will remember you passwords and you can connect to your website easily.

Go to your control panel in your web hosting account and look for create FTP account. If this is your first time doing this leave directory blank, and just put in your domain,user name and password. I set my quota to unlimited. Click enter and you have set up your FTP account. Once you click enter, it will give you the information you need to access your account. Copy and paste this into a document and save it on your desktop.

Open Filezilla, and on the top left, below File if you hove over the button it will say open site manager. Click on that. It will bring up the site manager window, with your options for setting up your new FTP account information. Open your document from earlier, and fill in the information.

Host is the FTP server. Set logon type to normal, and type in your user name and password. Name the account something that you can remember for your site. If my site was mysite.com I would name it mysite. Once you have filled in all the information with what you saved on your document, click connect.

Once you have clicked connect you will see four large quadrants on the interface. Computer Folders, computer files, server folders and server files. These are important because you can work everything from this location. You also have the option of drag and drop from your desktop.

The themes I recommend are listed with the resources on my website under free marketing training and website development for SEO.

To install your theme, refer to the large quadrant on the upper right called remote site. This is your server folders. Click to open the folder and then scroll down to public html. Click on WP content and then click on themes. The quadrant under the server folders is your server files. It will already have the default WordPress themes installed, classic and default. What you want to do is find your theme that you have downloaded through the process on the left, or open it on your desktop, and the drag and drop it into the server files quadrant. Once it is done setting up you are ready to go into WordPress and activate your theme.

This is your first step towards website development for SEO. You are now ready to customize your SEO options.